Establishment is one of those words that we often use loosely without necessarily thinking much about what it exactly means.  It is a word that occurs in many different contexts of society.  It may be a word describing something about politics, the business world, the legal profession or the Church.  Some of the time the speaker will use the word with a tone of disapproval.  It is normally possible to gauge what the user thinks of the concept by the way the word is spoken.  A lighter tone can suggest approval or, at any rate, acquiescence in all that the word involves.  In a political context establishment values make us think of people whose thinking is on the right in the political spectrum.  In most contexts the word is used to denote a group who stand for precedent and they will value the task of preserving tradition and order.  The analogy of left and right is offered as a useful shorthand for what we are trying to describe in interpreting establishment.   Leftish thinking, in whatever context, will seek to challenge establishment ideas.  From that perspective, establishment values will be thought to be those blocking the way to change and movement within an institution.  Centrist-thinking people (like me!) will see both sides of the argument.  There are times when challenge is needed but other occasions when we should value the order and stability of the past which establishment values represent and preserve.

Notions of left and right, in describing the way institutions operate, are only very rough approximations of the dynamics of organised groups.   But anything that enables us to navigate a path of understanding as to the way an institution like the Church works may be helpful.  Establishment conservatives in the Church will have, in common with other members of institutions, this reverence and respect for tradition and the status-quo.  While it is true that there are many individual members of the Church who fall into this category of wanting at all costs to protect and preserve its values and traditions, there is also a sense in which the institution itself preserves these values.  It is no exaggeration to suggest that any organisation will behave like a living being with a built-in instinct for its self-preservation.   Also as a general rule, we find that the greater responsibility an individual has accepted within an organisation, the more establishment in thinking they become.  They have invested their identities within the institution so that this identity is likely to reflect the values of the whole.  As prominent servants of the Church, bishops and other leaders become, with few exceptions, the guardians of its establishment values and traditions.

To continue our analogy of left and right, we see how the left wing in the Church constitute those who challenge the status-quo whether for practical or theological reasons.  We have no space here to examine those who challenge the Church with radical theological ideas or those who raise the topic of welcoming minorities into the worshipping life of the Church.  Our concern here is the way that the body we call survivors challenges establishment values within the institution.  The nature of the challenge has various elements.  Survivors have some important points to make against those who occupy positions of power or leadership.  The accusations against powerful individuals in the structure disturbs the smooth narrative, or should we call it mythology, which says that only individuals of the highest moral calibre become bishops and priests.  If even a few individual bishops and priests fail in this way, the ‘left-wing’ challengers, here represented by the survivors, want to ask uncomfortable questions of the institution.   Is there something about the culture of the Church that encourages the dysfunctional behaviour among some of it servants?  Why does the Church engage in bullying and lying in order to supress the evidence of evil behaviour?  We saw such things revealed in the IICSA hearings in the Peter Ball section.  No establishment will find such questioning comfortable. It profoundly undermines the sense of what their institution is and how people will come to regard it both in the present and in the future. 

 To make life complicated there is in the Church of England more than one establishment grouping.  Two at least come under the challenge and scrutiny of survivors.   The first establishment finds its centre in the power structures and networks associated with St Helen’s Bishopsgate.  We would claim that this network provided cover for the abuses of John Smyth and Jonathan Fletcher. A second establishment power block, not defined by theology, operates out of Church House Westminster and interlocks with the House of Bishops.  Exactly how that network works, with its links with lawyers, publicity machines with access to huge financial assets, is shrouded in mystery.  For decades no one has queried the work of the Church at the centre operating in secrecy and without apparent scrutiny.  The reason for this tolerance of an undemocratic process at the heart of the Church was because it seemed to work smoothly.   Appointments to high office were made without any scandal or suspicion of simony.  The financial decisions that guard the assets of the Church Commissioners seem to operate highly efficiently.  But there should always be room for challenge when it comes to any establishment, especially when they exercise their powers secretly.  We have the expression ‘speaking truth to power’.   Here we are talking about holding power, especially that of establishments, accountable.  Yesterday (Monday) we had the extraordinary news of Bishop Stephen Cottrell openly admitting a serious safeguarding failure of ten years ago.  This new openness is remarkable, especially in view of the history of cover-ups which traditionally exists at the heart of the Church.   We need to see this disclosure followed up by other safeguarding concerns being addressed promptly.  There are a cluster of other pending complaints to be dealt with against other serving bishops on safeguarding issues.  We can hope that this new openness is the start of a new contract between the secretive establishments of the Church and their radical questioners and would-be reformers.    

A further observation about establishment behaviour within the Church needs to be drawn out.  Thinking of the clergy, I would not be wrong to suppose that many young clergy begin their careers inspired with a sense of the radical demands of the Christian faith.  In our left-right analogy, they are firmly identified with the left.  Their vocation is an invitation to live a life of service of the Kingdom.   Priorities like evangelism, teaching and the service of one’s fellows after the example of Jesus, are a priority.    As time goes on, the demands of the institution become more pressing, whether their local church or the denomination.  The drag of that institution to make them its creatures becomes irresistible.  They become more and more aware of their role as being subordinate to the institution.  They come to recognise their dependency on it for their livelihood, their status and future.  They become, in other words, more and more like company reps.  They then start to adopt the habits, the mannerisms and the styles of what they think a clergyperson should be.  Another way of saying it is to suggest that the Establishment is rather like a large magnetic force which tries to draw all into its orbit.  After thirty or forty years caught up in its force field, few have that independence of thought and action that may have been there at the beginning. 

It is important to point out that my own personal experience of supporting survivors over quite a number of years has made me firmly, in church political terms, left-wing.  I might easily otherwise have acquiesced in the quiet life of trusting all the decisions of my leaders and ecclesiastical betters, thinking that I can rely on them to uphold and protect the Church’s reputation.  But in the face of lies and cover-ups that are so often part of the experience of abuse survivors, one’s attitude is changed.  Acquiescence and trust has made way for me to want to challenge and confront some of these establishment forces in the Church.  Although my influence is small, the voice I possess is given a little power by the internet, support of vocal survivors and the power of Twitter etc.  Small pebbles thrown into the pond of church politics can sometimes make real ripples and influence opinion.  Many people of influence and power are decent people and if enough can be persuaded to see more clearly the principles and values of decency, fairness and justice, then the conservative power of sometimes dishonest structures can be broken.  Am I wrong to see the honourable open behaviour of Stephen Cottrell as the possible harbinger of a new approach to the past?  Five years ago all seemed to be secrecy and cover-up.  Are we at a springtime of decency, openness and new beginnings, while shaking off some of the power of the establishments?  There is much to do but there seems at present to be an inexorable movement in the right direction. 

It is nearly twenty years since I left my last English parish in Gloucestershire.  I am aware that since I ceased to be an English vicar, many things have changed in the typical parish.  In the 80s and 90s the ‘secular’ wedding and funeral had barely been invented; the consequence was that I officiated at most of such events in my community.  My experience of parish work then was that there were always people to visit in their homes, whether bereavement follow-ups, shut-ins, the sick or baptism families.  My visiting was constantly increasing the numbers of people that I knew well within the community.  After 16 years in the same place, I had heard the personal life histories of hundreds of individuals and families.  At that time, a vicar was expected to know everyone, as well as be seen out and about on foot or on a bicycle within the area.  Trying to fulfil the expectation of extensive visiting and visibility was something I carried over from the training in my curacy days back in the early 70s. 

The one thing that I could not leave behind when I moved on to pastures new in Scotland was all this detailed information about individuals and families in the parish.  It went with me.  Having been able to reflect back to a funeral congregation some real personal memory of the deceased, had been an important part of helping a family in their grief.  These personal memories could not be transferred to a filing cabinet. No longer could a wedding couple have the added reassurance of one of them having known the vicar since being prepared for confirmation eight years previously.  My successors had inevitably to start from scratch.  My personal memory bank was not available to my successors.  It was particularly sad when an individual descended into dementia or disability and the one in charge of their funeral had never known them as people of vigour and selflessness.   It is certainly placing no blame on my successors to say this.  It is just the way it was.  People and their deeds get forgotten very quickly and that may happen to any of us.  A long-serving vicar may be the only person around who knew quite how much Mr so-and-so or Miss Blank achieved in their time, even more sometimes than the families.  The vicar often carries in him/herself much of the corporate memory of what that person represented to the community.

This word memory is an important one to think about.  We have this expression ‘corporate memory’ to describe how some important memories, good and bad, about individuals or events are sometimes preserved within institutions.  When a good corporate memory is preserved, it can provide some kind of lasting memorial to a person.  More often such memories are lost.   Sometimes there is a change of personnel in an organisation or there may be deliberate policy of repressing the memory because what he/she represented is no longer in fashion.  But these corporate memories are important because, even when they become weakened, they contain part of what has created the present.  Honouring the people of the past, even in a generalised way, should always be part of the self-understanding of a community or church congregation even when the actual memories have grown dim.   

In today’s Church we have one area where memories are still very important, the world of safeguarding.  One group carries all the memories of past abuses in the Church going back as far as 60 or 70 years.  These are the individuals called survivors/victims.  Their memories are detailed, reliable and, unfortunately for them, sometimes vivid to the point of being traumatic.  On the other side are the professionals dealing with the safeguarding issue.  They might be expected to engage readily with those who carry all this information from the past, because this information is in danger of being forgotten or lost.  But the institution they work for, the Church, expects the professionals to regard safeguarding as an issue to be sorted.  There is thus this institutional fix-it approach.   The professionals use the benefit of their educational background, whether legal, social work or reputational management, as providing skills to solve the ‘problem’.  The material they have before them are reviews, reports and legal arguments about liability.  The one glaring omission is that, in their heads, these professionals have no direct access to the detailed and vivid memories of the survivors.  All too often, they seem to have little interest in acquiring any of that memory by simply listening to the survivors.

A couple of years ago a woman survivor spoke to me about a phone call she had made to a central Church safeguarding point of contact.  The complaint this survivor made to me, was that there was first a profound lack of listening skills or understanding of the needs of abused individuals on the part of the person taking the call.  This failure was combined with another kind of failure, a complete ignorance of any of the then recently published reports, those connected with Peter Ball and the Elliot report.   Here was a representative of the Church paid to speak to survivors who had not been brought up to speed with any of the material which survivors and their supporters thought of as basic background information.  Was the fact of this palpable ignorance the result of a rapid turnover of staff, or suggestive of a broader loss of corporate memory that we spoke of above?  This failure of corporate memory which seems to affect many of the professionals involved with safeguarding is a serious one.  Time and time again in the IICSA process, qualified individuals were shown to be ignorant of factual and historical material or lacking areas of basic understanding of the way things are supposed to work in legal or social work contexts.  The latest corporate memory failure is the failure to implement the Carlile recommendations made over the formation of Core Groups.  Had the professionals simply forgotten what Lord Carlile had said only three years before?  How could the NST not once, but twice, fail to ensure that the survivor/alleged perpetrator was represented in the Group?  The second issue is the extraordinary harmful legal advice, given by the Church’s top legal adviser in 2007 and circulating for ten years, that pastoral contact should be shut off from survivors if they made a legal claim.  This was a year after the Compensation Act (2006) specifically stated that such expressions of support would not be deemed to affect compensation claims.  How much suffering was caused to survivors by this profoundly incompetent piece of legal advice?

At present there exists a ravine between two sides where one seems to be frightened of the wisdom, the experience and the memory of the other.  On one side there are those who have the memory (individual and corporate) of events, evil actions and decades of suffering.  These are the body of articulate but still traumatised survivors.  On the other side are the professionals who are trying on behalf of the Church to resolve the massive problems caused by the Church and the outcome of years of incompetent management in this area. The professionals, we would claim, lack proper understanding of the deeper issues of abuse as experienced by the survivors.   They also operate with an unhealthy obsession to see their role as being primarily a defensive one.  As long as the whole safeguarding industry adopts this defensive posture, the communication, the bridges across the ravine will never be properly built.  The Church, as a whole, needs this issue to be solved.  Otherwise, it will continue to be a profound wound in the heart of the institution, damaging and weakening us all.

Commentators on religious affairs are giving a lot of thought as to the ways that churches will be having to change after covid-19.  Here is not the place to rehearse all these potential disruptions but to bring to attention another major historical shift, one that is soon likely to affect many Christians groups in the USA.   In January 2021, after what is expected to be a massive defeat of Donald Trump in the November elections, a new US President is due to take over at the White House.  Assuming that the prediction of a Democratic landslide defeat is correct (by no means certain), the subsequent political upheavals will change the whole atmosphere of American life in numerous positive ways.  We trust that there will be a collective sigh of relief as people welcome back a period of honesty, truth telling and an end to the criminal self-serving behaviour in the White House. The task of being the new 2021 leader of the free world in a post-covid, economically battered country, will be indeed an enormous responsibility.  The task that is laid on this new American president’s shoulders will be every bit as demanding as that given to Franklin D Roosevelt when he came to power in 1933.  He had to sort out the appalling aftermath of the stock market bloodbath of 1929 and the depression that followed it.  The decisions of a new president of the United States will be of importance to all of us as economics and the effects of the virus are international in their scope.  

The one social entity in the States that has supported President Trump fairly consistently over the four years of his presidency, are the group described as ‘white evangelicals’.   This expression does not really correspond to any group that we have in the UK.  The commentators in the States who try and convey the significance of the term, sometimes describe them as people whose self-definition is contained as knowing who they are not.  White evangelicals will typically be working class and have cultural and political assumptions about the superiority of the white race over Latinos and blacks.  Those of them who attend churches will naturally gravitate towards congregations that are, by UK standards, extremely conservative/fundamentalist in style.  The word ‘fundamentalist’ does not have the same negative connotation in the States as it does here.  There are many Americans who regard themselves as ‘belonging’ to such churches, even if they do not physically attend them.  Extremely conservative religious beliefs, with shades of racist and ultra-right political assumptions, are those that are paraded when these ‘religious’ Trump supporting Americans need an identifying label to give themselves a secure sense of who they are. 

According to a recent video on Youtube, the white evangelical ‘tribe’ is one that has given its soul to the cause of President Trump. The minister speaking on this video to make this comment, described this relationship between Trump and this large tribe of white evangelicals, as a kind of Faustian pact.  On the one side the group have given, through their leaders, a kind of sanctification or blessing on the reign of Donald Trump.  In return he has promised to give them access to the White House and some influence in shaping some of the priorities of government.  The most important goal for these evangelical leaders and their followers is the chance to see favoured candidates nominated for the Supreme Court. These appointments have a long-term effect on the whole of society, since the appointees serve for the whole of their lives.  In the Supreme Court some of the most significant struggles for the soul of America are being fought.  Much is said about culture wars in the States and the battles over abortion and the status of same-sex relationships.  These battles are of vital importance to conservative Christians in the struggles against ‘liberal-humanism’.   So far President Trump has successfully placed two new conservative judges in the Court.   In theory this should have quickly led to the repeal of laws not favoured by the conservative religious Right.  This expected outcome has yet to materialise as the appointed judges have not voted entirely as expected.  This part of the story must be put to one side for another time. 

So far, the exchange of favours negotiated between Trump and his white evangelical supporters has worked mainly in Trump’s favour.  They remain a solid block of voting support which does not shift, whatever examples of incompetence or scandal are revealed.  But many of the more aware of the Christian leaders among the white evangelical tribe have started to notice the considerable cost involved.  It is an assault on their Christian value systems to support a thrice married racist who shows little loyalty, even to those who support him.  There is also a recognition that the unwritten agreement that exists currently could be overturned at a moment’s notice, once the individual or group no longer serves Trump’s purposes.  The lying and hypocrisy that emerge from the White House have also not impressed the young people within the tribe, and there has been a noticeable collapse of support for conservative churches from this cohort.      

The commentator on the Youtube video gave me two particularly fresh insights into the culture of white evangelicals in the States.  The first insight concerned the drifting apart that is taking place between some leaders and their flocks.  Leaders of evangelical congregations, like himself, were starting to have active doubts about the wisdom of supporting Trump.  He said that the problem was that their congregations would never support them if they tried to suggest that Trump was in any way flawed.  So, it was fear that kept leaders on board within the Trump camp.  The alternative was to be voted out of their posts.  Power in many independent congregations does not belong to the nominated leader.   

A second point that was mentioned in the video also related to fear.  The interviewee commentator mentioned attending conferences where they were taught to ‘encourage’ generous giving.  The professional trainers in this area had a simple message.  This was to tell the ministers that the more the congregations were frightened and angry, the more money they would donate to the church.  To summarise, the message was ‘give us more fear and more anger’.   

It is hard to know exactly how the cohort of white evangelicals in the States will respond if their ‘hero’ is defeated in November.  There is something very volatile about this group and one can see that some members of this Christian tribe could easily be provoked to violence if their leaders were to suggest such an action.  But whatever else is true, a culture of fear, potential violence, anger and extremist thinking is never going to be a healthy mix.  As we have already suggested, it is not a version of Christianity likely to go down well with the more liberal young.  It will also have even less pulling power, if the figurehead of the movement is thoroughly defeated in November and required publicly to face up to his numerous crimes. 

How will evangelicals in this country fare in this potential cataclysm to the brand name that may happen in the States in the autumn?  As we have already suggested, there are significant differences in the meaning of the term in the two countries.  But for all the differences, the two groups still share a descriptive name.  For that reason alone, evangelicals here should be concerned about the events taking place in the States.  The damage on American society caused by Trump and his supporters is so massive that there may be a huge political and theological backlash against those groups who have supported him.  The term evangelical may become a toxic description for decades to come across the world.  If evangelicals here or anywhere in the world want to avoid that guilt by association that is inevitably on its way, they need to start to plan now.  They have to examine the word and allow it to be defined in ways that have not been corrupted and made unclean by association with the criminal reign of Donald J Trump. 

The recent news about the suspension of a Permission to Officiate for Lord Carey is less than 24 hours old.  As yet, the facts about the case are slim but there is still enough material in the public domain to hazard some guesses as to what might be going on.  We can build our attempted reconstruction on other information that has been in the public domain for some time.

The new evidence that has emerged, making the suspension of Lord Carey necessary, has appeared in the process of the Makin review on the case of John Smyth.  This evidence suggests a serious safeguarding failing on the part of Carey over his dealings with the case in the past.   In the course of few short days, this new material has been reported to the National Safeguarding Team and, through a freshly constituted Core Group, a demand for Carey’s PTO to be removed has been made.  The speed of the process and the manner of bringing it rapidly into the public domain, reminds us of the Martyn Percy case.  The media are informed as the same time as the ‘accused’.  This feels heavy-handed.  A fair-minded person might question whether this ‘blitzkrieg’ approach to church discipline can ever be justified.  Could not some notice be given to the target of a enquiry when information is about to be shared with the media?  Carey, a man in his mid-80s, has had to concoct a statement for the Press with no notice or chance to examine or even know what he is accused of doing.  Unlike his accusers, he has no communications department to help him.

Lord Carey has ‘no memory’ of having known Smyth at any point.  There is, however, reported to be a cross fertilisation between the two men in Bristol in the early 80s.  Smyth was apparently an independent part-time student at Trinity College when Carey was Principal.  Given the fact that at the time Trinity was attended by a number of former Iwerne campers, Smyth would have been known to them.  No doubt he would have been the object of some discussion and gossip over his sudden departure from the Iwerne scene.  It would be strange if none of this got back to the Principal.   Smyth would have spent his time at the college attending the occasional lecture and presumably was in touch with at least one of the staff to supervise and support whatever studies he was engaged in.  In time, the precise nature of Smyth’s attendance at Trinity will emerge and we will have a better understanding of the nature of the link between Carey and Smyth at that point. It is known that Iwerne Trust and David Fletcher took active steps to warn organisations about Smyth. The Stileman Report says: ‘John Smyth tried to join a number of organisations (eg The Stewards Trust and the Above Bar Church Church in Southampton) but DCMF and others warned them off.’ It would seem likely that Trinity was also given some kind of warning. We are led to conclude that Carey is likely, one way or another, to have known something about Smyth’s past and his reputation as a Christian leader.  We can however believe that the Ruston report about Smyth’s Winchester activities was still then kept under wraps and only known to individuals high up in the Iwerne network.  Carey never became involved in that network or befriended its leaders.

In 1983 Smyth was a highly socially confident individual with all the trappings of his class background and position. He was a professional man of the world, possessed wealth and knew a massive number of people in the world of socially aspiring evangelicals.  These were precisely the things that Carey did not have.   If the safeguarding failure that Carey is charged with took place while he was at Bristol, then we can see how that Carey could easily have been manipulated by Smyth.  Something could have leaked out about the Ruston report (1982) which would have required Carey to take immediate action as the head of his college.  One scenario would be that Smyth had a meeting with Carey where some accusation was made.  Smyth could then have proceeded to name-drop some of the powerful figures in the con-evo world that Carey looked up to and were actively shielding Smyth.   We are here admittedly in the realm of pure speculation, but this is one possible scenario that makes sense of the limited information we have at present.

A safeguarding failure by Carey could also have taken place in Lambeth Palace and would have followed a similar pattern.  Carey was still extremely susceptible to being ‘played’ by others more powerful than himself.  We here allow our speculation to closely follow fact here, because the IICSA evidence shows in detail how this happened in the case of Peter Ball.  Carey allowed his judgement to be manipulated by Peter Ball and his brother in a private meeting without witnesses.  They seem to have used techniques of persuasion that had, no doubt, been used on many others as Ball rose up the church hierarchy.  The dysfunctional world of Lambeth Palace at that time has also been shown up by the IICSA hearings, and it is true to say that Carey was failed by the lack of effective staff around him.  Bad safeguarding decisions that were made at Lambeth in the 90s seem partly to be a personal failure of Carey himself, but they also flow from his inability to find staff who would challenge poor decisions.  It is one thing to be guilty of making such decisions; it is another not to be be able to recognise that this is happening over a period of time.   

In this hastily written piece about George Carey’s loss of his PTO, we speculate that this event follows the emergence of new paperwork from either Trinity College Bristol or Lambeth Palace.     One of the things that we hope Makin’s enquiry is uncovering is just how many other distinguished church people had information about Smyth but chose to keep quiet.  Is the NST process going to be deployed against everyone who could have acted to protect the innocent from Smyth’s predation in Africa, or is the NST going to focus on elderly retired prelates or church leaders who are out of favour?  We certainly hope to see impartial justice principles at work in this whole process.  So far we have yet to see fairness and justice being afforded the highest place.

The reader of my blog posts has probably been exposed to more detail of the Martyn Percy affair than they may wish to have.  Gilo made some very perceptive comments in his piece last week but there is still, even at the cost of some repetition more to be said.  What we know and have been told in the public domain tells us a lot about the topic of bullying, harassment and outright unpleasantness that sometimes takes place, not only in an Oxford college, but within the Church itself. 

What can I say by way of comment over this conflict?  It is quite clear that Martyn has in the past upset the equilibrium and status quo in two powerful institutions.  In the first case, at Christ Church Oxford, a group of senior members have complained about him in his role of Head of House or Dean on two separate occasions.  We, as outsiders observers, have no detailed understanding of the first allegations made against him.   All we do know with some certainty is that a Tribunal was convened under the chairmanship of a retired judge, Sir Andrew Smith.  This found him innocent of the accusations made against him – all twenty-seven charges were dismissed.  Our sympathy for Martyn’s cause is aroused by the fact that he had to endure two years of pressure and stress.  We feel for anyone who, in the course of allegations against them, is suspended from his work and made the object of a campaign of vilification and slander.  Moreover, who was denied the opportunity of even having a preliminary investigation before the Tribunal against him was convened. 

This Tribunal involved the spending of huge resources of charitable money, thought to be over £2 million. Martyn’s own legal costs have been huge.  When the Tribunal verdict was announced, we hoped that the problem would go away.  We might also have hoped that the original accusers might express a little remorse for having spent so much charitable money to further their cause.  But no, the current situation is that the same accusers among the governing body have re-emerged to continue the campaign against the Dean.  This time they are using a quite different set of accusations and a different method of harassing and undermining Martyn.  Having exhausted the procedures afforded to them by the college statutes, the complainants have moved on to attack him using the tools of the quasi-legal structures of the Church of England.

Those of us who support Martyn and his principled stand over a variety of topics in current church debates, are aware that he has made enemies.  As an avowed progressive, he is not easily going to fit in with the prevailing opinions of a largely conservative bench of bishops.  The one particular issue over the past five years that has rattled many cages is the George Bell affair.  Martyn has prominently identified himself with those who regard the posthumous trashing of Bishop Bell’s reputation as contrary to the laws of justice and historical truth.  Many of us, with Martyn, regarded the alacrity with which Church leaders assigned guilt to Bell as being an attempt to show a decisiveness while many other more recent safeguarding allegations were being mishandled.  

The method of assessing and evaluating the Bell evidence was the infamous core group, the same tool that is now being deployed against Martyn himself.  It would not be hard to suggest, to use Gilo’s expression, that, in both case, the core group has been ‘weaponised’ against the subject of the investigation.  This is especially true when the person at the heart of the enquiry has no representation to speak on their behalf.  Again, in both Bell’s case and Martyn’s, similar church establishment mechanisms can be seen at work.  The NST have put Martyn “on trial” without conducting even the most minimal inquiry or interview with him.  The core group contained people who were prosecuting him for their own ends, and were heavily invested in pre-judging the outcome of any investigation.  This is identical to what the Dean had to endure at Christ Church from 2018.

As with Christ Church, so with the NST.  The Dean is forced to pay for his own defence to protect his reputation and integrity.  It was noticeable that the Anglican hierarchy were largely mute when the original Christ Church accusations were aired.  There was a sense that, while support was being expressed by hundreds of individuals across the country and £100,000 raised for legal costs, official support from the Anglican hierarchy was largely absent.

The appeal to the Church of England and its National Safeguarding Team by complaining Christ Church dons to examine accusations against the Dean of Christ Church, has already been explored in Gilo’s piece.  The mention by Gilo of the ‘right part’ of the NST hints at private conversations and plotting at the highest levels of the Church of England taking place with the complainants at Christ Church.  I understand that as far as the lawyers acting for Martyn are concerned, the NST has absolutely no jurisdiction in Martyn’s case.  Martyn is not an employee of the Church of England; he is not being accused of being a danger to children or vulnerable adults.  We also note the “vulnerable adult” terminology used by the NST.  The correct term is “adults-at-risk”, which is defined and deployed in higher education, local government and the NHS.  The NST are out of touch.  The safeguarding issues that are the focus of the enquiry had already been dealt with properly by Martyn, according to University and college protocols. 

Once again, a core group is being used to achieve a particular end.   What we see in the process seems to run counter to natural justice and fairness.  It also seems to take no notice of Lord Carlile’s remarks and the recommendations that were made by him in 2017.  We refer particularly to those that laid out how all interested parties should be represented. These were accepted in total by the Church of England and now they are ignored in what has become a notorious case, ensuring that the whole world is watching (and judging!) the Church of England as it stumbles ahead with a faulty grasp of proper procedures in this complex case.

If Martyn can stand up to the pressure currently being put on him, it could help expose the evident power abuses and appalling misuses of procedure which seem to be operating in the NST.  If the NST were to see sense and pull out of its involvement in the Christ Church debacle, this would have a desirable outcome.  it would allow the NST to be regarded as a properly accountable organisation. No longer would the considerable power of this body be used against individuals without clear and consistent protocols in the way that it operates.  Someone made the decision to allow the NST to enter the treacherous waters of internal Oxford collegiate politics. 

Who was it and what are the systems in place to query and even put a block on such a risky, even impetuous, decision? If, as is likely, the NST comes out of this disastrous intervention with egg on its face, who is going to take responsibility for this financial and ethical car-crash? In many ways this whole episode goes far beyond what Martyn may or may not have done to upset members of his college.  The issue has become one of the church using its legal structures in ways that deny compassion, natural justice and the basic qualities of care.  Once again the Church of England seems incapable of handling its power without hurting and damaging people.  Legalism, the power of money and privilege seem to be prominent.    If the general public sees some of this behaviour and is unimpressed, can we really blame them? 

Another question that is being asked by many of us is this.  If Martyn Percy deserved investigation over safeguarding issues with apparently such flimsy evidence being offered, then why not are other more pressing cases given attention?  There are several outstanding CDM claims against serving bishops which lie on file.  Presumably these can now be activated by victims and complainants? There is the case of Jonathan Fletcher which seems to be ignored by central church authorities, even though it reached front-page headlines of the Daily Telegraph.  If the allegations against Fletcher are even half-true, he still poses a safeguarding threat which should be a priority for the NST.  To focus on Martyn, who poses no such threat, and ignore Fletcher can only be described as a deeply political choice. 

Unless someone explains the real basis for NST involvement in the Christ Church factional disputes, Martyn’s supporters will conclude that the NST has become a political tool at the service of certain unaccountable factions within the Church of England.  If that surmise is correct, one would hope that the General Synod would wake up to this fact and vote the NST out of existence.  We cannot afford to have a rogue structure within the Church which operates with so much secrecy, factionalism and sometimes overt bullying.  Whoever authorised the unleashing of the NST on Martyn Percy has been responsible for taking an enormous gamble with the Church’s assets and reputation.  They have gambled on an outcome which, even if successful at one level, does no credit to the Church.  If the anonymous power brokers are, however, unsuccessful in what they are doing in Oxford, this may have the effect of destroying the NST structure altogether and their future ability to exercise power through it.

I do not know whether anyone reads the books by Adrian Plass anymore.  They are full of trenchant and perceptive comments about the church culture Plass was part of in the 80s.  There is one memorable passage in his Sacred Diary when he is speaking about the experience of being in a Bible study in his conservative charismatic church.  He describes how the passage for the week was read, and then all eyes were then turned to the leader, ’to find out what we think’.  Clearly there was an experience of bonding and merger in relation to worship.  That somehow was expected to be transferred into the way that individual thinking by members of the congregation was practised. 

 Church membership does indeed flourish when it successfully gives to people a sense of belonging and a place within the group.  Nevertheless, such belonging does not have to involve everyone thinking the same ‘correct’ thoughts as in Plass’ church.  Churches, both locally and nationally, can be said to be ‘bodies’ of which we are part.  When churches get this right, we find that members all receive a level of spiritual and emotional integration with others, which is life enhancing. The metaphor of the Church as the Body of Christ is also one that is richly evocative and potentially the subject of numerous sermons.   I introduce this idea of belonging and the metaphor of the body as a prelude to pointing out how, in some circumstances, this kind of experience can and does go wrong.   As an idea it needs to be approached with a certain caution.  In the first place when we join a group, we must become aware of the way that this membership will impact on what we think and say.  There is of course nothing wrong in being part of a group consensus.  Nevertheless, I would suggest that it is always important to be alert to the possibility that opinions are being formed by something we call ‘groupthink’.  This expression, which has been extensively studied over the past 60 years in social psychology circles, is a way of saying that when a group of people have identical ideas, there may be an unconscious merging process taking place.  This will often be unhealthy. In some contexts, such as in the military, it can be a potential cause of disaster.  To prevent such a potential catastrophe happening in this kind of situation the outsider, the dissenting opinion, must be given a voice and honoured for expressing it.

The Christian tradition has had a lot to say about outsiders and Jesus himself is described as the one who ‘went outside the gate’ to bring alienated sinful humanity back into the presence of God.  We also are encouraged to go to him ‘outside the camp, bearing the stigma that he bore’.   In life and death Jesus identified with outsiders, the sinners and riff-raff of his day.  But there is an earlier outsider in scripture that I want to focus on in this piece.   Janet Fife mentioned the OT prophets in a blog comment a few days ago.  The outsider prophet that especially comes to mind is the figure of Amos.  He is the classic dissenter and he stood outside social and religious norms simultaneously.  ‘I am no prophet nor a prophet’s son’.  His outside status was also confirmed by the fact he was a foreigner, (a Judaean in Israelite territory) and he was called to the menial task of a shepherd and ‘dresser of sycamore trees’.  Amos’ prophecies, directed against the northern kingdom of Israel and uttered around 720s BC, were devastating.  He saw little that would be left after a terrible destructive military incursion.  The details of Amos’ prophecies are not important here, but simply the fact that they exist.  Here we have a solitary figure, an outsider, a foreigner and an unqualified person speaking truth to an entire nation about what God had determined.  That nation did not listen and it was destroyed.

I do not think that we currently have a single Amos speaking to the Church of today.   We may, however, have the voice of Amos fragmented across the witness of many dissenting outsiders who have something to say to the church.   Institutions, whether entire countries or church bodies must learn to hear the prophetic voices spoken to them through the mouths of these outsiders.  Why might the outsider, the dissenting voice, have something important to say which is not being expressed within the group?  I am far from claiming that the outsider is always right or that institutions cannot speak truth to themselves.  What I am suggesting is that the ‘groupthink’ principle warns us that no institution can afford to shut out the outside and independent voice.  That opinion or insight is not to be blocked off.  Indeed, anyone who expresses an opinion which is not reflective of a group norm is at least likely to be worth listening to. 

In this reflection I cannot help but think that, in the world of safeguarding, the prophets are easy to identify.  These outsiders, the ones who see things clearly by being free of the encumbrance of institutional interests and values, are the group we collectively call survivors.  Survivors speak truth to power.  They have passed through the crucible of abuse.  Whether or not they remain loyal to the institution that was involved in their abuse, they still have valuable insights and a critical understanding of it.   Janet pointed out that the other outsiders will include such groups as the BAME and the LGBT communities.  They also will see things differently because of their long experience of exclusion. 

In the post-Covid days that lie ahead of us, church leaders are going to have to do, among other things, an enormous amount of listening to ensure that their institution will still be fit for purpose in the future.  Whether in the realm of safeguarding, which is at the heart of this blog’s concerns, or addressing some other focus, we can hope that the church will be able to hear what is being said by others who may not be members.  The word of the outsider, the critic even, may be the word of God to this generation of church leaders and our own House of Bishops.  Survivors of abuse, possessing an enormous wealth of experience and understanding of what is involved in this area, have a vast quantity of useful things to say about the right way forward.  They should not be consulted as a kind of public relations exercise, but all their words should be carefully listened and pondered in case, like Amos, they are speaking the prophetic words and will of God.   Ignoring their witness would be both foolish as well as expensive for the church.

The prophet, the outsider, is one who utters the words of God to the institution, even though that word may be uncomfortable or even disturbing.  To compare the state of the Kingdom of Israel in 720 BC and the Church of England in 2020 may seem a little far fetched.  But, in both situations, there are real serious threats which are sufficiently serious for me to suggest that such parallels do exist.  Church leaders today must listen, not only to its internal groupthink, but also to its minorities, the survivors, the BAME community and others who seem to have received the Good News, but struggle to be heard by the  rest of the church. It is both hearing and responding to the prophetic word of God that that the church may find a new impetus and power to take it into the future.

by Gilo

Having written a piece about the use of ‘core groups’ and the Clergy Discipline Measure, to be discussed by the House of Bishops this month, Surviving Church has received a further contribution on the topic from Gilo. Gilo’s current piece focuses on the Martyn Percy saga at Christ Church Oxford and explores the way that Church of England official safeguarding procedures have somehow become entangled in the affair. The process has become messy and it is hard to see a good outcome when good practice and the pursuit of fairness appear to have been bypassed along the way. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the entire structure of Church of England safeguarding is on trial in this one case. And yet the situation presents to survivors a new opportunity to bring legitimate complaints about many serving bishops. In the past, complaints have been routinely dismissed, but now we would expect to see core groups and action. Ed.

The National Safeguarding Team has instigated a ‘core group’ to investigate complaints against Professor Martyn Percy by disaffected members of Christ Church alleging safeguarding failures. This follows the comprehensive dismissal by Sir Andrew Smith (a retired High Court judge) of the original case brought against Percy by members of the Governing Body seeking his removal from office. To many who have followed the media stories on this saga, this latest development resembles a kangaroo court with the deployment of weaponised safeguarding in a desperate attempt to oust the Dean. It was reported by the Church Times (29 May) that Percy has no representation on this core group but must adhere to its diktat. It seems likely that this action by the NST will add considerably to the reputational damage already done Percy by the group of college dons.

As has been previously written on this blog and elsewhere – NST core groups are already a deeply contentious issue. There’s a striking parallel here with they way they’ve been used in survivors’ cases as little more than a PR management exercise. In my case, the NST had the lawyer present who led the settlement for Ecclesiastical Insurance – but I had no representation and didn’t know a core group had taken place for 18 months. The appropriation of the NST in Percy’s situation is likely to rebound heavily on an already mistrusted and discredited Church of England national safeguarding.

It has been reported that two of the dons pitched against Percy sit on this core group. If either of them sent or received proposals to “poison” the Dean and fish his “wrinkly withered little body” out of the river, then the NST has entered the realm of Ortonesque farce. In most organisations emails at this level of delinquency about a colleague, and circulated widely amongst a professional body, would result in disciplinary action. Survivors have frequently written angry letters to and about bishops – I openly include myself in their number but have never expressed a wish to see particular Bishops fished out of the Thames from Lambeth Bridge! The media reported that the Senior Censor tried hurriedly to get the College Council to self-delete the full report in what appeared to be an attempt to bury these juvenile emails. The Senior Censor apparently sits on this core group. You couldn’t make it up!

But more disturbingly, I have heard on good authority and am aware that others have also heard, that at a recent Governing Board of the college, one of the senior college figures boasted to the Trustees “the wily Censors have made sure they complained to the right part of the National Safeguarding Team”. If true, both ends of that statement are extraordinary. I don’t know if the NST are aware of this. I don’t imagine so. There would be an outcry across the Church if the NST had been complicit in their own ugly appropriation. It would raise questions about who is controlling different bits of this structure, and in particular who is pulling the strings of the “right part” of the National Safeguarding Team. I suspect Synod members would throw their hands up in horror and ask: how the hell does one rescue a Church’s national safeguarding so far down a road of ethical dysfunctionality?

But this core group sets an interesting precedent. Quite a few Church of England Bishops have been accused of safeguarding failings, cover up, poor response or no response towards survivors, gaslighting, blanking and fogging, dishonesty – yet how many have had core groups convened about them by the National Safeguarding Team? It would now seem that a complaint from a single source against a senior church officer is no longer time-limited, but will result in the formation of a core group on which the complainant can be personally represented. The person under investigation will presumably be asked to step aside from safeguarding responsibilities during the investigation. Although the circumstances in which this has come about are ugly and point to church officialdom targeting a well-known critic – the situation has unexpected potential for survivors. There are a significant number of survivors who have credible and legitimate claims that serving bishops have mishandled disclosures of abuse or have been dishonest in their response. We might welcome the opportunity to have core groups established, and to have complaints acted upon at last. I suspect the number of bishops who could feasibly be asked to stand down through such action might be surprising.

There are bishops on the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG) who in mine and others view shouldn’t be on that group until retraining, moral reorientation and proper apologies render them fit to respond to survivors with honesty, decency, compassion and a sense of urgency to situations. The same could be said for other bishops. Matt Ineson could justifiably bring legitimate complaints against four bishops and one retiring archbishop. If the NST were to follow the same route as they have done with the Dean of Christ Church – all five would be required to abide to the conditions imposed by the core group while those investigations take place. And Matt Ineson would have representation on each of the core groups, or one combined core group, and could be present himself presumably if he so wished. And that is only one such situation. There are plenty of others. Incidentally the CDM complaint against the Bishop of Lincoln is also proceeding out of time, which again raises questions in relation to CDM complaints made against other bishops – all of which were ruled out of time. It would seem sensible to find out from the Director of Safeguarding what the formal route now is for complaints to be made, so that several bishops can be asked to stand aside without further delay while core groups are set up. The NST can hardly ignore any such request. Survivors might speculate as to which part of the NST is the “right part” to complain to for action. If, for example, you send an email to safeguarding@churchofengland.org, does that go to the right part, or the wrong part?

Returning to Martyn Percy who I know a little, he wrote a chapter for Letters to a Broken Church and has been an unwavering ally for survivors. My personal view is that he has more integrity and courage than many current bishops whose response to the abuse crisis (with a few notable exceptions) has shown them to be a run-for-hills culture … insipid at best, downright dishonest at worst. I end with a quote from his chapter in our book:

Like many loyal servants of the Church of England, I have watched IICSA over the past three weeks with a growing, troubling, deep sense of shame. This is a hard thing to admit. To know that you belong to a body where you can no longer believe of trust the account of the polity or practice that is being offered in defence of its behaviours by its own leaders. To know that the real victims in this tragic farce who are still waiting for basic, fundamental rights that should be givens for the church – recognition, remorse, repentance – are abused twice over.

In the first instance, it is by their actual abuser. The second time, and far worse, is the subsequent abuse perpetrated by the Church. For this is a church that is deaf, dumb and blind – and seemingly wilfully indifferent to the suffering undergone by those abused – and then addresses this with little more than an incompetent veneer of safeguarding practice, which only further compounds the original act of abuse.

The Church Times’ 22^nd May issue contained a notice that the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) would be discussed at the House of Bishops’ meeting in June.  This debate is a hopefully a precursor to a replacement or a radical amendment to this piece of church legislation.  Since the CDM came into effect in 2006, it has been controversial.  Some who have suffered its outworking have experienced it as extremely stressful, painful and traumatic.  Indeed, the legislation is regarded by many as the most appalling piece of church self-regulation that has ever been conceived.  Left intact or with only minor tweaks, the CDM has been thought to have the power to cause lasting damage to the Church. 

When the Church of England brought in CDM, it was to replace the extremely cumbersome regulations that existed in church law to tackle the problem of clergy malfeasance.  Before 2006, the Church could do nothing to discipline an erring cleric unless he/she broke the laws of the country.  The CDM was an attempt to make it possible to take action when the church authorities deemed behaviour by a member of the clergy to be unbecoming or the cause of scandal.   

One of the main changes was that anyone, Archdeacon or ordinary parishioner, could make a complaint about a clergyperson.  Whether the complaint was trivial or weighty, it had to be examined and taken seriously.  Over the years since 2006, numerous issues have arisen over the implementation of the measure.  Some have pointed to the expense while others have complained about the inordinate amount of time involved.  Survivors are asked to provide written evidence to back up their complaint, and may spend many months compiling a dossier that is never read; yet the one-off submission of written evidence is the only evidence that is allowed.  After the conclusion of the CDM, there may be a review – but in one case the views of the survivors were redacted from the version that was posted online.  

During April, an article on the CDM and church safeguarding, by Josephine Stein, was published in the journal Modern Believing.  The article is a powerful critique of the way the CDM has been implemented and deserves to be read by the bishops and anyone concerned about the way that the CDM has failed abuse survivors. It extends points on this topic made in Stein’s essay in Letters to a Broken Church, and explains why reform or rejection of the  CDM is urgently needed for the sake of the health of the whole Church. 

Stein’s article explains why the CDM has been an unsuitable tool for dealing with cases of clergy sexual abuse and other safeguarding issues. Each suspected case of abuse will involve at least one survivor/victim as well as an alleged perpetrator.  Any legal process will do little or nothing for an abused person or victim.  The CDM seeks evidence that can be verified independently, which is nearly impossible as abuse is normally conducted in private and often uses insinuation and/or non-verbal threats.  The abuser typically uses grooming and spinning a web of secrecy around the events, especially in a case involving children, to further conceal his actions

Only through a psychologically informed process of interviewing an alleged victim, is there likely to be uncovered what Stein calls ‘dyadic dynamics’ between the perpetrator and his target (most perpetrators are male).  This expression captures well the nuance of a manipulative process whereby a powerful individual exploits one who is weaker.  A process based only upon written evidence is hardly the best way to uncover the truth about abusive behaviour.  Finding out what really happened will be better accomplished by informed  questioning by a psychologist, who could also very quickly spot false accusations.  

An abused person who has suffered at the hands of an abusive leader needs always to be at the heart of any process after the event.  The CDM process, by being focussed on establishing blame and punishment, allows the victim of abuse to be put to one side.  Practical outcomes, like suitable counselling, psychotherapy and/or spiritual direction for a victim and steps to prevent a perpetrator continuing the pattern of abuse, need to be put in place as part of the overall process.  If these important issues are not dealt with, the harm to the victim as well as the reputation of the Church will be massive and long-lasting. 

Stein considers the role of core groups which sometimes form part of the Church’s response to allegations of abuse.  The setting up of such a group might, on the face of it, be seen to be a good way of informally resolving and obviating  a full CDM process.  In practice, as we saw in an earlier blog post, these core groups have not always been well managed.  Furthermore, core groups ignore confidentiality by ‘sharing’ information widely, which may enable the perpetrator and his allies to take retaliatory action against the ‘accuser’.  This is deeply unsafe.  The focus according to Stein has been on ‘managing’ the problem rather than seeking the best outcome for all concerned.  When core groups work in a way that excludes a survivor, they can become a gross attack on his/her privacy and well-being and will tend to obstruct justice.

To mention one recent example, the core group set up by the Church to examine the case of Martyn Percy at Christ Church Oxford seems to have been ‘weaponised’ against him.  It is unclear who authorised this process, but it has led to a situation where allegations against Martyn are discussed in a forum where he is not represented.  Private Eye has examined this case in detail.  Because of all the publicity over this case, we are likely to see the eventual discrediting of core groups as currently constituted as a suitable response to safeguarding allegations. 

Stein’s article makes some very important points about the needs of survivors which the CDM process does not address.  Survivors of abuse, she claims, do not usually have money at the top of the list of their needs.  However, her comments on psychological, spiritual, legal and financial support for survivors need to be taken to heart. 

Negotiating settlements with insurance companies and their lawyers is also experienced as damaging and re-traumatising.  There is also the issue of legal fees for survivors.  Legal fees and internal costs to the insurers can end up more than double the amount ultimately received as a settlement, which by any objective standard would be considered incommensurate with the costs borne by the survivor related to the abuse.  Stein refers to a quote from an essay by Andrew Graystone published in Letters to a Broken Church.   Graystone’s question for church leaders in their approach towards survivors is this: ‘not .. how little can I pay them, but how much can I love them.’

The other major issue that Stein brings to our attention is the ‘one size fits all’ approach to clergy under accusation by the CDM.  Clearly there are different levels of misbehaviour.  Once again, having an independent assessor trained in a relevant discipline can uncover such things as immaturity or a personality profile that includes habitual dishonesty that may lie at the heart of a case of misbehaviour.  Such assessment may sometimes be able to ‘rescue’ an offending individual from being lost to the profession permanently if some sort of rehabilitation is appropriate.  In some cases, something similar to Circles of Accountability and Support may be the right way forward. 

In her final comments, Stein expresses her sense of urgency that the conflict laden/legalistic approach to clergy discipline must be superseded.  We may hope with her that the Church of England through the action of the House of Bishops will discover a much broader range of responses both to perpetrators and victims of abuse.  Failures in this important area not only make the Church an unsafe place, but they undermine the Church’s standing with the wider community.  That collapse of trust is a serious matter.      

by Janet Fife

‘You’re in a man’s world now. You’ll have to fit in.’ So said one of my colleagues soon after I was ordained deacon in 1987. That put a damper on my newly ordained enthusiasm. I’d thought I was serving God, and found I was only working in a gentlemen’s club. Not a member but a menial. Some years later, in a different diocese, that feeling was reinforced when a senior cleric told me, ‘The real reason we don’t have women on the bishop’s senior staff is that, if we did, we couldn’t tell the same kind of jokes in our meetings.’

The Church of England is infested with men’s clubs, both literal and metaphorical. It has long been clear that they do not serve the interests of women, BAME people, and what used to be called the working classes – anyone, in fact, who is not a ‘gentleman’. More recently it’s become obvious how destructive they are to the interests of survivors of abuse.

The House of Bishops excluded women until recently, and still has too few to change the culture. Since its deliberations are secret, and neither agendas nor minutes are ever published, we know little about what goes on there. We do know, however, that very few bishops against whom safeguarding complaints are made face a penalty. The most notorious case is that of Matt Ineson, who reported his rape by a priest to an archdeacon (now a bishop), two bishops and the Archbishop of York. None acted on Matt’s disclosure; CDM complaints against them were ruled out of time. Bishops protect each other.

Forward in Faith and the Society, defending the seal of the confessional, oppose mandatory reporting of abuse. Experts have expressed concern that some abusers exploit confession to free them of guilt so they can abuse again.

At the other end of the churchmanship spectrum is ReNew, the conservative evangelical constituency.  ReNew is linked to Reform, AMIE, Church Society, and Titus Trust. Many ReNew leaders are products of the boys-only Iwerne (now Titus Trust) camps, as is the Archbishop of Canterbury. Titus Trust and ReNew leaders strongly resist sharing information about John Smyth, Jonathan Fletcher, and other alleged abusers associated with the Iwerne camps. Titus Trust, with income nearing £2 million p.a., fought claims for compensation from Smyth and Fletcher survivors. So far they have settled with only three of over 100 victims; sums paid to them are far exceeded by the sums paid to Titus’ expensive lawyers and PR firms.

Nobody’s Friends, the elite private dining club centred on Lambeth Palace, was largely unknown until it featured in evidence given to IICSA (the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse) last summer. Lord Lloyd of Berwick, a former Law Lord, wrote to Archbishop Carey on Peter Ball’s behalf in January 1993, saying, ‘”May I presume on a brief acquaintanceship at dinners of Nobody’s Friends?”’ Lord Lloyd continued to lobby Lambeth Palace on Ball’s behalf well into 1994. Nobody’s, which first met in 1800, consists of half clergy and half laypeople:  Tory grandees, judges, public school headmasters, and the like. Historically all male (women were first admitted in 2004), Nobody’s has been a place for men to exercise influence and angle for preferment. It currently has over 150 members. In Lord Lloyd’s evidence we saw how such a club may serve the interests of abusers over those of their victims.

Freemasonry is one of the oldest and largest male clubs, and like the others has a reputation for secrecy. The extent of its influence within the Church of England is hard to discover, but undoubtedly exists. In 1984 a retired Sussex priest told me of his membership in a Chichester vicars’ Lodge; this was while Eric Kemp was diocesan bishop and Peter Ball bishop of Lewes. Years later the social responsibility adviser of another diocese expressed his concern that all three archdeacons, the heads of every major diocesan committee, and the diocesan secretary’s husband were Masons and that diocesan financial decisions reflected Masonic priorities.

 What all these men’s societies have in common is that they have close links with the Establishment and exercise influence within the Church in secretive ways. They operate on behalf of vested interests and for the benefit of their own members, and hate transparency. Stephen Parsons and Gilo, writing on the blog SurvivingChurch, are doing much to expose the ways in which these and other groups exercise patronage and work against the interests of survivors of abuse.  

The Shemmings Report into abuse in Chichester Diocese has a valuable section on networks and how they function. It notes:

“at different times, sexual offenders were operating in the organisation which, due to the particular type of inter-connectedness of the ‘network’ just described, means that they were influencing others in the network, sometimes deliberately but often unknowingly.”

This applies also to those who fail to take action against offenders. When an archbishop gives inaccurate information about Iwerne abusers, is that an honest mistake or is he motivated by loyalty to his ‘club’? When a bishop who frequents Masonic functions does not act on a priest’s confession of abuse, we wonder whether the Masonic connection has any relevance. But whatever the influences at play here, we know it is not the interests of the victims or children which rank first with these prelates.

Safeguarding cannot be effective in a Church where the interests and loyalties of clubs and networks predominate over values of justice and truth. The shepherds cannot protect the sheep while occupied by feasting.

And so I pray, in the words of the anonymous canticle ‘As one who travels in the heat’:

…you have blessed me with emptiness, O God;

You have spared me to remain unsatisfied.

And now I yearn for justice;

Like an infant that cries for the breast,

And cannot be pacified,

I hunger and thirst for oppression to be removed,

And to see the right prevail.

Amen.